Happy Halloween!

 When is a Scary Monster Movie not Scary?

We have reached that time of year when tradition demands the scary and the spooky.

While there is certainly no shortage of horror films to consider for a Halloween film evening, I have decided to go for a slightly different option this year.


Matinee (1993) is director Joe Dante's love letter to his own childhood, and specifically the monster movies of the 1950s and 60s that made such an impression on him during his formative years.


John Goodman plays (fictional) film-maker Laurence Woolsey, a director of extremely schlocky and gimmick-laden "scary" movies, who has arrived in Key West Florida to promote his latest opus; an exploitational B-picture about a half-man-half-ant (called-inevitably-Mant).



As fate would have it, the premiere of his new film coincides with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; a moment in 20th Century history when the world came as close as it ever came to actual, full-scale Nuclear War.


Matinee cheerfully contrasts the very cheesy scares of a bad monster movie with the very real fears of actual Nuclear Armageddon, all seen through the eyes of a group of innocent (but slightly hormonal) teenagers.


In the middle of all this social commentary is the film itself, Mant, a beautifully rendered tribute to the work of two actual film-makers of the era: Roger Corman (with whom Joe Dante actually worked at the beginning of his career) and more specifically, William Castle, whose carnival-inspired publicity techniques made him a one-man legend in the rather niche world of schlocky horror.


In an odd way, this is the most personal film Joe Dante has ever made, and it stands as a loving tribute to an era when (at least in popular perception) Nuclear Armageddon and Giant Bugs were one and the same.


We'll be screening Matinee at the Victoria Park Baptist Church at 7.30pm on Thursday the 28th of October (which is, by a curious coincidence, the exact date of the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Spooky!).

Come along, if you dare!

(No seriously, it's a very sweet film, and not even a teensy tinsy bit scary.)


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